


A Love That Takes You Far

by Cherepashka



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Family, Fluff, Humor, Pining, really good pakoras, terrible pakoras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 11:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17161142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherepashka/pseuds/Cherepashka
Summary: A gentle bump to Yaz's shoulder startled her out of her thoughts. Ryan was regarding her with raised eyebrows. “She’s going to notice eventually if you keep looking at her like that.”





	A Love That Takes You Far

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orangemonster33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangemonster33/gifts).



> Gift for orangemonster33. Happy holidays, and hope you enjoy!
> 
> Based on the prompt: Yaz likes trying new food and seeing new places and the Doctor takes her on a romantic date somewhere in the universe (can be established or new thasmin).
> 
> This... gets there eventually?

Yaz watched as the Doctor conducted what looked like a complicated dance with a many-limbed, scale-covered alien. The alien, she’d gathered, was the leader of the city they’d just prevented from being flooded with toxic gas from a neighbouring planet’s ill-conceived methane harvesting operations. The Doctor wrapped her arms around one leg and flailed her hands wildly; the alien mayor, or whatever their title was, rippled their limbs in what might have been surprise or possibly amusement, then repeated the gesture. The Doctor turned and walked back toward Yaz, Ryan, and Graham.

“What was that?” Ryan asked.

“Hm? Oh, just saying goodbye. They don’t use sound for communication, they’ve got this very nuanced sign language overlaid with scent signals — we should come back sometime for a poetry recital, they’re really quite aromatic — but it’s a bit tricky because I haven’t got the right number of arms, or the right scent glands. Very easy to accidentally end up calling your mother a Horsehead Nebula. Ooh, I hope I didn’t insult them. Probably not, they were thanking us. I think.” She tilted her head, nose wrinkling. “Or possibly banishing us to the voids of space.” With a shrug, she bounded off toward the TARDIS. 

Yaz smiled at her retreating back. She loved it when the Doctor got enthusiastic about something, which she always did when things had gone well and they’d been able to help people without losing anyone or making terribly hard sacrifices. In the aftermath the Doctor was always buoyant, and Yaz wished she could make that feeling last forever.

A gentle bump to her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts. Ryan was regarding her with raised eyebrows. “She’s going to notice eventually if you keep looking at her like that.” 

Yaz felt her face grow hot, grateful her skin was dark enough to hide the blush. “What? There’s nothing to notice.” 

“Yaz.” His voice was more gentle than teasing. She looked away just in time to catch the knowing look Graham was directing at her. Fantastic. Her face grew hotter until it felt like she was burning. Graham just gave a sympathetic nod and turned to follow the Doctor, leaving Ryan alone with Yaz. 

“Have you thought about telling her?”

“Course not! I’m not _that_ selfish!”

Ryan frowned at her. Yaz sighed and bit her lip, trying to find the right words to make him understand. 

“Look, the Doctor is the best person I know. And traveling with her, helping her, is the best thing I can think of to be doing. It doesn’t have to be more than that. It wouldn’t be fair on her to want it to be, not when she doesn’t want that.” 

“How d’you know she doesn’t? Since you haven’t actually talked about it with her,” he pointed out. 

Yaz attempted a smile. Ryan was right, they hadn’t talked about this, not explicitly, but, “You’ve heard her talk about the others she’s travelled with.” With affection and pride, yes, but also with a wistfulness — more than wistfulness, _grief_ — that made Yaz want to take the Doctor in her arms and just hold her. “Those others, they were human, just like us. And she’s . . . not. She’s been through stuff we can’t even imagine. I understand why she wouldn’t want to — to get too attached. I’m not going to ask it of her. It’s not her job to fix how I feel.”

Ryan held her gaze for a long moment. “Guess not. Still, seems a bit hard on you.”

“Don’t worry about me.” She punched him lightly in the arm and set off to follow Graham, and by the time she and Ryan entered the TARDIS she’d managed a real smile. “Where to next?” she said brightly. 

“I think that’s up to you, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor said, a grin lighting her face. She toggled a lever and the TARDIS took off. “Come on, your turn to pick. We could go watch sunset from Belgarix, it’s supposed to be spectacularly beautiful — and their planet’s rotational speed means they only get one sunset every fourteen years or so, so it’s a massive festival as well.” Ryan was giving Yaz a look that said _Sunset date?_ as clearly as if he’d announced it out loud. She ignored him. “Or how about the dragons on Carovallin? Well, they’re not really _dragons_ , they don’t breathe fire, but they do breathe ionized gases that make for a spectacular light display.”

“I don’t know, both of those seem pretty exciting.” A loud rumble from Yaz’s stomach interrupted her. “Or, you know what, maybe it’d be nice to see a place with really good food.”

“Second that,” Graham said at once.

The Doctor thought for a moment. “Oh, I know? We’ll go to the open-air markets of Chikaar, they make these little battered fried things with their local plants, and they’ve got spices you can’t find anywhere else in the universe, you’ll love it! Plus, you can find someone to mend anything for you, and I do mean anything.” She bent over the control panel to plot their course. 

Before she finished, however, the TARDIS jolted as if banking sharply to avoid hitting something, or as if it had run into a sudden patch of extreme turbulence. 

“What?” the Doctor said. It took Yaz a second to realize she was talking to the ship. “No, I meant Chikaar. Yes, Chikaar, which is in the opposite direction, both spatially and temporally!”

The TARDIS jolted again and Yaz lurched, staggering against the wall, and grabbed hold of an odd-shaped metal protuberance with brightly flashing lights to steady herself. “What’s happening? Can’t you stabilise it?”

Just ahead of her, Graham was bracing himself as well, only whatever he’d grabbed onto looked like a curtain rod wrapped with possibly sentient cloth. Yaz couldn’t see where Ryan was. 

“I’m trying!” the Doctor ground out, draped bodily across half the controls in an attempt to reach a little panel with an array of coloured buttons. “And the TARDIS isn’t an _it_. If she’s insisting on going somewhere she’s usually got a good reason. I don’t think we’re in danger. Probably. I just — wish she’d be — _oof!_ — a bit more forthcoming — about what the reason is!” This last was shouted in the general direction of the ceiling and seemed to be an admonition to the ship as a whole. The Doctor punctuated it with a jab to one of the buttons on the panel she’d been trying to reach. The TARDIS gave one last shudder as if peeved, then smoothed out. 

“ ‘S alright, I’m okay,” came Ryan’s voice from the floor across from Yaz. He’d evidently decided that staying there was safer than trying to reach a wall. “Thanks for asking.”

Yaz cautiously let go of the metal protuberance and went to give him a hand up. 

“So where’s the TARDIS going, then?” 

“Trying to figure that out.” The Doctor’s forehead wrinkled in concentration as she scanned the navigational controls with her sonic screwdriver. “Well, that’s odd.” She looked back up at the rest of them, bafflement plain on her face. “She’s taking us back to Sheffield again.”

§

“No spiders, that’s a good sign.” Ryan looked around, taking in the overcast sky and familiar blocky flat buildings.

“Yeah, but the TARDIS must’ve brought us here for something.” Nothing seemed amiss, but Yaz couldn’t help worrying, a bit. “I should go look in on my family, make sure they’re alright. Want to come? I’m sure they’d be pleased to see you.” Pleased, and also possibly confused, a bit suspicious, and likely as not ready to lay the usual guilt trip on Yaz for disappearing again. The fact that she’d visited twice since leaving with the Doctor had helped to allay some of her mum’s worries, but the fact that one of those visits had involved an infestation of giant spiders and an underground repository of toxic waste had not. 

“Actually, I,” Graham hesitated. “I think I might like to go see Grace. Since we’re here.” 

“I’ll come with you,” Ryan said softly. “If that’s okay.”

“ ‘Course it is.” Graham reached up as if to put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder, but dropped it awkwardly before it got there. “ ‘Course it is.”

Ryan shoved his hands deep into his pockets and they set off together. That grief was still deep for the two of them, Yaz knew, but they were learning to share it. She didn’t know whether Ryan’s father would ever really be there for him, but she was glad he and Graham seemed to be getting a bit closer. She took a breath and turned to the Doctor. “Well?”

“I’m always in for tea at Yaz’s!” The Doctor grabbed her by the elbow and marched off toward Yaz’s home. No, Yaz realized, toward her parents’ home. It was still a place that meant family and love and being driven constantly mad in completely familiar ways — but _home_ for her had become the TARDIS, had become careening across the universe alternately terrified and exhilarated but never bored, had become standing at the Doctor’s side.

She was lucky, she thought, that she could have that without completely losing her family. 

When no one came to the door, though, her worry sharpened. “Mum? Dad? Nani? Is anyone there?”

“Yasmin?” came her Nani’s voice. Yaz heaved a sigh of relief. “Come in, come in.”

Yaz fished out her key and let herself in. Umbreen was sitting at the table, a newspaper spread open to the Sudoku puzzle page in front of her. She smiled warmly as Yaz and the Doctor trooped in, but Yaz was suddenly struck by how frail her grandmother looked, somehow smaller and older than the last time she’d seen her, even though based on the TARDIS’ readings that had only been a couple months ago. 

She might not lose her family to her time-traveling adventures, but that wouldn’t stop her from losing them the ordinary way. 

Swallowing past the sudden tightness in her throat, she bent to kiss her Nani’s wrinkled cheek. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Your mother and father are out shopping. They should be back soon. Sonya’s with her friends.” She looked around Yaz to smile at the Doctor, who was scrutinizing the toaster with intense concentration. “I see you’ve brought a friend of your own today.”

The Doctor sprang upright, nearly bashing her head on the cupboards above the counter. “That’s right! Friend of Yaz’s. Lovely to see you. We’ve definitely not met before.”

Yaz grabbed her hand to stem the flow of words before the Doctor could implode the time-space continuum in paradox with her efforts to make small talk. She didn’t think her grandmother would recognize the Doctor from their brief visit to Partition-era Punjab; she hadn’t recognized Yasmin as one of her strange wedding guests either, after all. “This is the Doctor, Nani.”

“Ah, the mysterious doctor! It is good to meet you. Sit, I’ll make tea.” Umbreen smiled, glancing sharply at where Yaz’s hand was still clasped around the Doctor’s. Yaz hastily let go. She came from a long line of overly perceptive women, she ought to know better 

She retreated to the stove to cover her mortification. “Don’t get up, Nani, I’ll do it.” 

“I knew there was a reason you’re my favourite granddaughter.” Umbreen chuckled. “So, the mysterious doctor. Your mother had quite a bit to say about your doctor friend, Yasmin.” 

“Good things, I hope,” the Doctor put in. 

Umbreen smiled, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Yasmin has always chosen her friends carefully. She can be kind to everyone, but she’s selective about who she loves.” Yaz nearly dropped the kettle. Very carefully, she set it down, and then turned to glare at her grandmother over the Doctor’s shoulder. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to visit her family. 

The Doctor, however, didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd. “That’s our Yaz.”

She was uncharacteristically quiet while Yaz finished the tea, though, grinding cardamom into it the way her grandmother liked it. Umbreen didn’t seem to find the silence awkward, humming an Urdu ghazal to herself as she finished the Sudoku. When Yaz brought over the tea, though, she said, “So, favourite granddaughter. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Yaz met the Doctor’s eyes. Alien assassins, witch trials, terrorist attacks — and in between, close-up views of supernovas, picnics in the distant future, hours in the TARDIS’ library just talking with Ryan and Graham and the Doctor. “Er, traveling,” she said brightly. “Lots of traveling.”

“Yeah, I love to travel,” the Doctor added. “All of time and space to see! Er. Which is just an expression, of course. Part of the lingo in, er, Lancashire. We were just there recently! Picked up a lot of the local slang on our visit.”

“But don’t worry, Nani,” Yaz jumped in. She’d have to steer the conversation to firmer ground. “I’ve still got your watch. If you could keep it safe all the way from Punjab, I can keep it safe no matter where we go as well.” She kept it in a little box in her coat pocket, and now she pulled it out now, laying it on the table. Umbreen’s eyes softened. 

“I never did tell you how I got it, did I.”

“That’s all right, you don’t have to. It’s enough to know it was special to you.” Of course, Yaz did know exactly how Umbreen had gotten it — she’d been there, after all — but that was even more treacherous conversational ground. 

“It was given to me by someone I loved very much. He loved me, too.” Her gaze was distant, fond and a bit wistful, but not sad, and she seemed to want to talk about it in a way that she hadn’t in a long time. “He died. He died helping my family and me, and because he believed in peace at a time when many others did not.” 

“You must miss him very much,” the Doctor said, softly. 

Umbreen picked up the watch and ran a finger over its cracked face, lips curving into a small smile. “Yes. For a long time after that, I thought I was alone. I thought I would be alone for the rest of my life.” 

“You weren’t, though,” Yaz said.

“No, I wasn’t. Death didn’t end the love I felt for him, but it didn’t destroy my ability to feel it for others. I had my mother, and then I met your grandfather.” She laughed to herself. “It took quite a bit of time and some stubbornness on his part, but I loved him very much too. And your mother, and you and Sonya. I am glad for the life I have had.” She handed the watch back to Yaz, closing her hand over it. “And I’m glad that you are finding a life you can be glad for, with people you care about.” She smiled at the Doctor, who hastily rearranged the odd expression on her face to smile back. “Even if it takes you far away from here.” 

“Nani—”

The sound of voices in the corridor outside announced the arrival of Yaz’s parents, and then the door was opening with a clatter of grocery bags and rapid footsteps. Hakim and Najia spilled in, then pulled up short at the sight of Yaz and the Doctor at the table with Umbreen. 

“You’re back!” Najia exclaimed, and then added, with a shrewd look at the Doctor, “Though I don’t suppose you’ll be staying long?”

Yaz tucked the watch back into its box and went to help put away the groceries. “Just a short visit, mum. We happened to be in the area, is all.”

“Well, you’ll at least spend the afternoon,” her father said. “Come, I’ll make—”

“No need, really, we just ate,” Yaz lied hastily, even as her stomach gave another grumble. They _had_ been on their way to food when the TARDIS deposited them here, but her father’s pakora truly were terrible. 

“This is the third time you’ve brought the same friend back,” Najia said to Yaz in what was clearly meant to be an undertone. “Are you sure you’re not seeing each other?”

“ _Mum!_ ” Yaz hissed. It had definitely been a terrible idea to visit her family. She was glad to have seen her Nani, but there was no way the Doctor hadn’t heard that. When Yaz glanced back, though, the Doctor seemed fully engaged in an animated conversation with Yaz’s father about elevators. 

She got them out as quickly as she could after that; there didn’t seem to be any crazy alien-related shenanigans plaguing Sheffield, whatever the TARDIS may have thought, and if she stayed much longer she didn’t think she’d be able to keep from spontaneously combusting.

§

She should have known better than to think she’d gotten away free, Yaz thought later.

Ryan and Graham hadn’t said much when they’d met up back at the TARDIS, both having enough preoccupations of their own to be going on with. The Doctor had simply started the ship and then told the control panel severely, “There wasn’t an emergency happening in Sheffield. Whatever you’re playing at, you can stop now, thanks.” And Yaz had thought that was that. 

But now the Doctor had just wandered into her room with an oddly determined set to her mouth. “Yaz.”

“Yeah?” 

“Why does your mum keep asking if we’re seeing each other?” 

Yaz froze, then sighed. She loved her parents, she really did, but…

Put it this way.

She’d come out to her mum midway through first year of police training in the middle of a heated row. Heated rows had been all too frequent then, since Yaz was coming off the tail end of her teenage-angst phase and Najia had been struggling to figure out her second career. Yaz had specifically asked to shadow on a case that had just come in — a lesbian couple whose house had been vandalised — and been denied. She’d hated that she was still stuck in training and traffic duty when there were real problems, real issues, she could be working to solve, issues that mattered to Sheffield and mattered to her, too. On top of which she’d done rather less than well on her last round of exams, so maybe traffic duty was all she’d be good for anyway, and it was all just getting to be too much. 

She felt helpless, like a failure, and she dreaded having to face her parents’ enthusiastic questions when all she wanted was to rest. 

She’d done her best to squash down the frustration and unhappiness so she wouldn’t spoil the winter holidays for her family, but Najia had the same rather disconcerting perceptiveness of all the Khan women — they were even creepier than advertising algorithms on social media, Yaz had decided — and somehow managed to hone in with unerring accuracy on the truths so uncomfortable Yaz hadn’t admitted them even to herself. She’d pushed and prodded and poked until Yaz’s shoddily built dam burst, and then all of the pent-up wretchedness of the last month had come out in a furious, messy flood. 

“You’ll get other cases once you’re out of training, why are you so fixed on this one?” Najia had demanded then, sounding honestly bewildered underneath the frustration. “Look at you, you must have lost five kilos” — a wild exaggeration, Yaz thought resentfully, she wasn’t _that_ undernourished — “you’re not sleeping, you’ve got dark circles under your eyes. Why can’t you just let it go?”

 _Because it matters,_ she’d wanted to say, _because it doesn’t feel like they’re take it seriously enough when it’s people like us who are hurt, because it’s necessary work, because it’s personal,_ but what she’d shouted in the end was, “Because I’m bi!”

The stunned silence that followed lasted long enough for Yaz’s fury to give way to mortification and then to a vague twinge of shame that she’d just come out to her mum by using her sexual identity as a trump card in an argument —It wasn’t even an argument she was sure she wanted to win. 

The silence kept going, and Yaz had started to grow truly frightened. 

Then, “When did you realize that?” her mother asked, as though she were asking _When did you realize you don’t hate eggplant curry?_ or _When did you realize you prefer biology to maths?_

Yaz, torn between staring slack-jawed and rolling her eyes, managed, “When I ell head over heels for my study partner for GCSEs.” 

Najia’s brow furrowed a bit. “Gina? The girl you kept meeting at the library?”

Yaz nodded.

Another long pause from Najia. Then, “Did you ever end up dating her?”

“Mum! . . . No. She likes men.”

“Oh, that’s a pity! She was rather nice, I thought. Even ate your father’s pakora, didn’t say a word. Shame that didn’t work out.” She patted Yaz comfortingly on the shoulder. 

“ _Mum!_ ”

“What, the pakora?” Sonya shouldered open the front door, a bag of groceries in each hand. “They never do. Yaz, does this mean I get to set you up with girls too now?”

“Women,” Yaz corrected absently, then winced. “Wait, you heard?”

“I think the whole building heard. Congrats on that. Seriously though, can I? Because I’ve got this friend—”

“I think I can handle my own love life, thanks.” The mortification had returned with a vengeance.

“You really can’t.” 

“Only because my sister is literally the worst wingwoman ever.” Sonya stuck out her tongue.

“If Yasmin finds someone she wants to be with, I’m sure we’ll all be happy for her,” Najia interrupted firmly. “Don’t push, Sonya.” 

The gleam in her eye had said quite clearly that if there was any pushing to be done, Najia would be the one to do it.

Yaz had swallowed a groan. 

Now, she looked at the Doctor ruefully. “Sorry about my mum, she’s been trying to set me up with anyone she even halfway thought was a friend since I came out to her. Probably best to just ignore her, you know, don’t take it personally.” _Except that this time she’s trying to set me up with the one person I’ve actually fallen for, who also happens to be the one person who least deserves this mess._

“Yaz . . . sorry, I don’t mean to push, but it’s just . . . _you_ seemed to be taking it a bit personally. Is everything alright?” 

“Fine! Yes! Perfectly alright.”

“Yaz.”

“Oh, damn. Look, Doctor, the last few months we’ve spent on the TARDIS, with you — it’s felt like we’re doing something meaningful, something real. For the first time I’ve felt like I’m doing something real. And that’s down to you. You’re — caring, and funny, and you never give up, and I’m really, really glad I got the assignment when Ryan called in that transport pod to the police — and I don’t want to spoil it! I’d never want to hurt you.” She closed her eyes.

“Yaz.” She felt the Doctor’s hand grab her own and squeezed her eyes shut tighter. “Yaz, Yaz, Yaz. Yasmin Khan.” 

Yaz opened her eyes to find the Doctor looking at her with a wondering, tender, radiant expression. She promptly went rather lightheaded. 

“I think I’d like to kiss you, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor said, and did.

§

The open-air markets of Chikaar, Yaz discovered, were indeed spectacular, endless rows of stalls bordering crazy winding mazes of alleyways, all going on for miles and miles, vendors hawking fantastical gadgets that mostly looked like they’d been ingeniously pieced together from the spare parts of other fantastical gadgets, and delicious-smelling food everywhere.

The little battered fried things the Doctor promised, though . . .

“Doctor,” Yaz said solemnly, once she’d licked the spicy-sweet sauce they came with off her fingers. “You do realize these are basically pakora?”

The Doctor looked stricken for a moment, until Yaz grinned.

“And they’re the best ones I’ve ever had.”

She leaned in, and kissed the sauce from the Doctor’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly abcooper's fault for luring me into this ship.
> 
> Yaz's experience of coming out to her mum here is not at all based on truth, not in the slightest, whatever would make you think that? (That was pretty much abcooper's fault too.)


End file.
